With only weeks away from a Official Open Beta for Sony Playstation Home Concept, They been testing the Facebook, Myspace interoperability features over in Japan since Q2 of 2008. and I’m very happy to see the North American version of such services finally taking shape.

Sam Sharit is a senior character artist at independent videogames developer Insomniac Games, located in sunny Southern California. His role there involves mentoring junior character artists, along with the creation and development of character-related art and systems. This includes modeling, texturing, pipeline creation, and scripting.

A classically trained artist, Sam started producing digital art in 1997. He has contributed to several AAA games, including Dark Age of Camelot, Duke Nukem Forever, Fallout 3, and Insomniac’s acclaimed Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. He also has worked on a wide range of projects outside of games, including military contracts, music videos and more. Sam lives in Los Angeles.

Sam: I have worked on several next-gen games and I can say that there really is no standard and it depends on your tech. I have never been able to make 60,000 poly models on the other games I have worked on. I was taken back a bit by how far I could push the polies here at insomniac and it really comes down to having an engine that can plow through that much geometry. I am certain that this number will continue to raise in the future for us, and as developers come to grips with the hardware you will see higher geometry counts all around.

Early next week, we’ll be integrating additional community features into PlayStation.com. We are excited to roll-out the first phase, which includes the ability to sign-in to PlayStation.com and, soon after, PlayStation.Blog with your PlayStation Network ID. Of course, your PlayStation Network ID gets you access to all the good things on the PLAYSTATION 3 and PSP, including games, movies and TV shows on the PlayStation Store, online gaming, and, soon to come for PS3, PlayStation Home.

In addition, we are making enhancements to the gamer profile features. Your profile will include your PSN online ID, your avatar, and a short “about me” section. You’ll also be able to display your friends list and, on the game detail pages, you’ll be able to include ratings and reviews for all of your favorite games. These features were created so that you can make new friends, learn new tricks and tips, talk trash, offer advice, console the defeated, praise the winners, and more.

If you have an Underground account on PlayStation.com and haven’t already merged it with your PlayStation Network ID, click here to do so. If you don’t have an Underground account but would like to create a PlayStation Network account to participate in the new features on PlayStation.com, click here.

We decided to dissolve the PlayStation Underground program in order to provide more PlayStation fans with a glimpse into the PlayStation Network world via the web. We hope you enjoy this next step in the evolution of PlayStation.com.

Stay tuned; before this year is over we’ll have more enhancements for your gamer profile.

Thank You for all the wonderful memories, along with a very bright future for our beloved Playstation 3 system. Like many early adopters I paid the full retail price for my CECHA01 and after two great years Playstation 3 is truly coming into its own. With Resistance 2, Ratchet and Clank FTOD, Uncharted Drake Fortune, Heavenly Sword, Motorstorm Franchise, Little Big Planet. With the Playstation Home just around the corner. And games like Guerrilla Studios Killzone in which I’ve been beta testing for Sony. The future is bright!

Thanks to the new firmware 2.50, many new wonderful features have arisen. I just finished watching one of four broadcast segments in High Definition, however it’s unclear if its FlV, or MPEG-4 streaming. What ever it is I love it! Thank you Sony, its as if you were there in person another new feature is a search function found in the video section of the Playstation Store.

I’ll be up-loading photo’s of the conference being stream via a North American Playstation 3 system, soon. Another new feature is Divx Video on Demand Services, providing a code unique to the Playstation 3 system allowing for playback of Divx VOD Services. Which allows you rent or purchase Divx VOD Content for use with Divx Certified Players.

Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. (SCEA) has teamed up with
YouTube™, the world’s most popular online video community allowing
millions of people to discover, watch and share originally created videos,
to create a PLAYSTATION®-branded channel that delivers exclusive video
content to the worldwide PlayStation community.

Launching today, October 14, 2008, and available athttp://www.youtube.com/playstation, the PlayStation channel on YouTube will offer
fans a place where they can easily access new trailers and game footage,
check out interviews with publishers and developers, share user-generated
content, participate in PlayStation promotions and contests, and stay
connected to the PlayStation experience. More than 50 pieces of content
will be available at launch, including features for SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs
Confrontation, MotorStorm™: Pacific Rift, NBA ’09: The Inside, and the
PlayStation®Network.

An evolving service, the PlayStation channel on YouTube will initially
consist of a primary PlayStation channel with a regularly updated “Featured
Video” and an embedded menu bar for specific games that takes users to a
playlist page for additional video content. Fans will be able to customize
their own YouTube playlists with PlayStation content and also subscribe to
the PlayStation channel for updates. The channel will also consist of a
menu bar that allows users to interact directly with other components of
the PlayStation community, including PlayStation.com (http://www.us.playstation.com/) and the PlayStation Blog (http://blog.us.playstation.com/). In addition, SCEA will leverage the
PlayStation channel to showcase contests alongside SCEA’s promotional
activities, encouraging fans to submit original content for a chance to
participate.

In the future, PlayStation’s YouTube channel will feature a user-generated
content section within the channel, as publishers and developers take
advantage of the PlayStation 3’s advanced application programming interface
(API) to allow users to create game mode videos. SCEA will also launch
game-specific enhanced YouTube channels, starting off with the highly
anticipated game LittleBigPlanet™. LittleBigPlanet, which launches on
October 21 will also have its own YouTube channel coming out in November
and will feature cross-promotion with the LittleBigPlanet.com community.

Hi everyone, as Eric mentioned in his post yesterday, we wanted to give you a live demo of the PSP’s direct access to PlayStation Store, which will be coming with the 5.00 firmware update. Now whenever your PSP is connected to the Internet over WiFi, you’ll be able to download and enjoy the latest games, demos and trailers on the go without needing to sync up to your PS3 or PC. Here’s a brief walk-through of what you’ll experience.

On a related note, the PS3 firmware update (2.50) will add Flash Player 9 support to the PS3 Web browser, so you’ll be able to actually watch this video (and all of our blog videos) on your PS3 once the firmware goes live!

In addition, I want to point out that the PlayStation Network is scheduled to be unavailable in North America today from 11AM to 4PM PST due to essential maintenance work.

Early next week, we will be releasing the SOCOM Confrontation Public Beta 1.50 Patch. In order to have ample time to test it, we are extending the Public Beta until midnight PDT Thursday, October 9th. We will have more details on the patch itself soon.We are using these extra few days to test the patch but we are still on schedule to release in North America on October 14th. We appreciate all of your feedback and hope you have been enjoying the Public Beta.